Carne Adovada (Red Chile Pork Stew) Enchiladas

As with my other enchilada recipes, Grilled Chilpotles Chili Chicken Green Chile Enchiladas and Mexican Pulled Pork Enchiladas, the enchiladas are made with leftovers from another dish, in this case Carne Adovada (Red Chile Pork Stew). For these enchiladas, I added leftover rice to the enchilada before adding in the Carne Adovada (Red Chile Pork Stew) filling. Serve with shredded cabbage and Pickled Vegetables.

When I made these enchiladas, I could purchase 10-inch (25.4 cm.) flour tortillas. Now I’m unable to get that size and 8-inch (20.3 cm.) flour tortillas are the largest currently available. This means that more (but smaller) enchiladas will fit into a pan or alternatively you can make the same sized enchilada out of two overlapping 8-inch tortillas. I also switched brands of enchilada sauce to Las Palmas. Las Palmas uses chile peppers as the main ingredient, rather than tomato sauce with chile peppers.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Cranberry Linguica Oyster Stuffing

 

For the first recipe of 2015, I am posting a recipe that I’ve been making every year for my family’s Christmas dinners and has now has become a standard dish. Like the Chinese Sticky Rice (糯米飯, No⁶ Mai⁵ Faan⁶) recipe, the dish’s preparation starts a few days before cooking and some ingredients are stir fried before assembling the dish to add flavor.

I’ve been making this variant of the original Sourdough-Cranberry Stuffing Recipe at Epicurious.com for many family Christmas dinners. The most notable additions are linguica and dried oysters. Given the aversion of one of my family members to celery, that ingredient is left out of this recipe, but definitely should be included if you make this dish (use the same quantity as the carrots and onions – 1 cup/125 ml.). I was always intrigued by the use of cranberries in this dressing, which is probably why I keep making it year after year.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to get my linguica from the Goulart Sausage Company. They are a small family owned business and I’ve been buying from them for many years (they make other products besides linguica). You know that their products have to be good when you see hardwood, used to smoke their products, stacked at the front of the business and smelling their smoker at work. I keep telling them that I need to visit them more often! Hopefully you can find such a gem of a meat producer, but if you can’t, store bought linguica or Italian sausage are good substitutes in this dish.

Oysters in stuffing is nothing new, but the oysters used are usually fresh. In this case, I’ve added dried oysters, an Asian ingredient, to a traditional American dressing. The dried oysters are of course rehydrated and are much smaller than their fresh counterparts. The oysters are a fairly recent addition to this recipe. I’ve made this stuffing without oysters for many years, so feel free to omit them since I think you’ll still like the results.

The thing about stuffing that I like are that the quantities of ingredients can vary and the resulting dish still tastes good. The recipe is very forgiving if you use too much of one ingredient or not enough of another. Some years I’ve used more linguica because I bought more than I thought I needed. Sometimes the onion I used is just a little too big, so I use it all. I’ve used other root vegetables, like turnips and parsnips, and in the end the dish was still tasty. So what I’m saying, is that you should feel free to experiment with the ingredients and quantities, and after all, you’re only experimenting on your family. 8-)

Enjoy!

Grilled Chilpotles Chili Chicken Green Chile Enchiladas

After making the Grilled Chilpotles Chili Chicken recipe (found here), I wanted to make enchiladas. This is actually a very easy dish to make and a great way to use leftover chicken. I usually use a red chile enchilada sauce, but I wanted to do something different, so I used a green chile sauce instead. The enchiladas are tasty no matter what color sauce you use, but it’s easier to find the red chile sauce at your local supermarket, while both the red and green chile versions can be found at Mexican supermarkets.

Enjoy!

Cranberry Orange Pumpkin Cheesecake with Chocolate Cookie Crust

I don’t bake very often, but I was asked to bring a dessert to a Thanksgiving gathering. I like pumpkin pie, and since it was Thanksgiving, a pumpkin cheesecake sounded really good. I got inspiration from the Cranberry Orange Cheesecake with Chocolate Crust recipe at the For Two, Please website and the Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe by Ethan Howard, pastry chef at Cavallo Point, Sausalito that was published in the local newspaper. Well, the cheesecake turned out to be a hit!

The chocolate cookie crust uses chocolate cookies with a crème filling (the most famous brand in the USA being Oreo – but this is not an Oreo cookie recipe!). After separating the cookies from the crème filling, the filling is usually discarded (or eaten!). So I had the wild idea to use the filling in the crust to help bind the crushed cookie pieces together. Well, I tried it and it worked. Since the filling already has sugar in it, I didn’t add any sugar to the cookie crumbs. I did have to add some oil (or melted butter) since there wasn’t enough of the filling to bind all the crumbs together.

You need to make the cheesecake and the filling the night before you want to eat it, so plan ahead!

Enjoy!

Mexican Pulled Pork Enchiladas

 

This recipe was updated on 28 Oct 2013. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

This pork for the enchiladas is from the Mexican Pulled Pork (Carnitas) recipe. Since the pork preparation takes time, I always make more than is needed in order to make other dishes. Homemade salsa is used as part of the filling for the enchiladas, and the pickled vegetables (in this case carrots and onions) and chopped cabbage are the accompaniments to this dish. The enchiladas themselves don’t take very long to make, but if the Mexican pulled pork and/or the homemade salsa is not available, substitute another available ingredient.

Enjoy!

Pepperoni, Mushroom, and Olive Pizza

Making your own fresh pizza and not eating frozen is one of the joys of life. To create the dough, I use Cheri’s Favorite Pizza Dough Recipe. You can read the background story here, but her secret is to add semolina flour to the dough.  I use the dough setting on my bread machine to create the dough rather than a food processor and I use all the dough to create one 14-inch pizza (rather than 2 medium pizzas as called for in the original recipe) since I like my crusts thicker than thin. The recipe says that you can make the dough in 5 minutes, but using my bread machine takes at least 45-60 minutes.

I use a Cuisinart 14-inch non-stick pizza pan to hold the pizza. Even though I have a convection oven, I use the oven mode (no convection) set at the highest temperature (in my case 555⁰F) and with the rack set at the lowest point so that the pizza is as close to the lower heating element as possible to get a crispy crust for 10-15 minutes. I found that if I use the convection setting, the toppings burn before the crust gets done. Depending upon your oven characteristics, your results might differ.

You can, of course, add any toppings that your heart desires. This pizza happens to use pepperoni, mushrooms, and Kalamata olives. For sauce I use a bottled tomato sauce from Trader Joe’s that I like – Trader Giotto’s Puttanesca Sauce – which contains anchovy and anchovy paste, among other ingredients. The cheese is a pre-packaged six cheese Italian blend (of course, your favorite cheeses can be used). Finally, I added the basil on top of the pizza at the last moment, since I forgot to place some down on the pizza after the sauce. This resulted in some rather sad looking dehydrated basil on top of the pizza (next time I won’t forget).

Enjoy!